Josef Newgarden thumped the field in another clinic that he put on during Saturday’s Hy-Vee Homefront 250. He led 129 of 250 laps en route to his 28th career NTT INDYCAR SERIES victory. However, the 32-year-old Tennessee native is a competitor. If you’re around greats long enough you’ll notice that they’re never happy. That’s because they strive for perfection and always want more. They want the next thrill and are always looking ahead to achieve it.

In order to be great you can’t rest on your laurels. You have to correct mistakes. Even if us common folks struggle to find it, Newgarden knows exactly what his flaws were on Saturday and knows that it could cost him a win on Sunday.

His mistake happened in qualifying on Saturday morning. He said on Friday after he was the quickest car in practice, that he was worried about the two laps facing him early in the morning.

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With rain falling on the .894-mile bullring right at the time qualifying was supposed to start, Newgarden was good with it not letting up for a while. He’d avoid qualifying and instead start third in both races.

He didn’t get his wish. The rain subsided, the schedule was adjusted, and the sun came out to help speed up the track drying process. At 11:19 a.m. ET, qualifying began.

Newgarden got everything out of his first lap but it was third best. His second lap was only seventh. That perturbed him.

“It was just unfortunate that we came off the truck so good — Luke Mason did such a great job with this car. I was so happy yesterday, pretty immediately, and then to qualify as disappointingly as we did, I think for us, for our expectation, if you will — it wasn’t a disaster, but it wasn’t where we thought we should be. I know it’s not where the car should be,” Newgarden admitted.

“I was really — I’ve done that a lot here. I’ve not qualified where I think we should.”

With practicing on Friday afternoon and racing midday Saturday and again on Sunday, you were having to qualify your race car in the cooler morning conditions. It wasn’t ideal and Newgarden feared he’d struggle to find the pace that it takes to take the top qualifying spot on both days.

“It was mostly setup today, which is not on anybody,” Newgarden said. “I’ll say it’s on me. Like I just didn’t quite know where we needed to be.

“I mean, you’re kind of guessing. We were supposed to originally qualify at 8:30. It was going to be a lot colder. So you’re basing the setup around that. Then you have to think about the race. We were also probably a little bit more lean to the race than other people because you’ve just got to choose a little bit.

“The temperature is going to keep rising in the race. Do you want the race car to be right, or do you want the qualifying car? And you’re kind of in the middle a little bit. So I don’t think we were fully optimized for qualifying, but I also just didn’t get the balance right.

“I would say it’s that. Last year was the same deal. I could have done better personally last year. I didn’t drive hard enough, so I was kicking myself for that. I felt like I drove hard enough today. I just didn’t have the balance I needed. We were pretty upset about it, but we knew we’d have a chance in the race.

“We’ve got a great car. We knew that right from the jump. It was just a matter of I felt like we could do more today. Even leaving now, we’ve got a lot of homework tonight to be even better. It was good, but it wasn’t quite good enough. It’s going to need to be better tomorrow is my feel.”

Starting seventh isn’t ideal. His two teammates line up on the front row and Newgarden knows that for one of them in particular, he could use his starting spot and what he’s learned from Newgarden to take advantage to keep the Tennessee native from a clean sweep of the weekend.

“I know Scotty (McLaughlin) is going to be good. Yeah, hopefully he is not too good, but he could be very good this weekend I could see,” he said on Friday.

Newgarden says that McLaughlin has had the luxury of seeing all the data into what makes the 32-year-old driver so strong here.

“Yeah, there’s no hiding when he is your teammate. I’ve gone a step further than that and just opened up my playbook for him,” he continued.

“He is smart. He is probably going to utilize that pretty well. He already looks like he is. So let’s see if I still have enough for him.”

McLaughlin admitted as much in saying that he’s studied and relied on what Newgarden has done here in order for himself to be stout as well.

“I give credit to Josef (Newgarden),” McLaughlin said. “We were on a plane home from Tahoe after doing a sponsor thing. I asked him, I watched every lap of his race and every lap of mine. He was very open what I could do better, where I could get air, whatever. He doesn’t have to do that. I think that’s the camaraderie I think we’ve got on the team.

“I’m sure there’s things he hasn’t told me. At the end of the day he opened up a lot, and I learned a lot. Like I said, I’ve been studying this a lot.”

Newgarden outlasted McLaughlin by 3.3755-seconds on Saturday. Does he now regret sharing that information with him?

“I mean, I knew he knew everything,” Newgarden said after scoring his 4th win in the last 6 races here. “I tried to be as transparent as I can with him as a teammate. He’s been — he’s a great member of the team. He’s a good pal. I want to kick his ass as much as anybody. It’s got nothing to do with that, and I’m not giving him any favors necessarily. I just think it’s the right thing to do.

“If your teammate wants to learn something, I hope he would give me the courtesy the same way. When he’s got something on me, I want him to teach me it. I think that’s how it should be. You don’t always get that, but I’m happy to teach him what I know.

“I look at it that it doesn’t really matter — if he knows exactly what I know, then it’s just going to come down to who’s doing a better job. If he does a better job than me, then he deserves to win. I hope he doesn’t do a better job than me tomorrow, but if he does, he’ll be a deserving winner. Let’s see what happens. He looked really good today. I’m going to probably have to step up a little bit more tomorrow.”

Now that McLaughlin has had 250 laps of racing on Saturday, more data to pour over as well as having a front row seat to witness what Newgarden was doing, watch out.

McLaughlin held Newgarden off for the first 93 laps before Newgarden got by for second on Lap 94. McLaughlin would then get by Will Power on Lap 143 and ride in tow to Newgarden the rest of the way to score his second top five finish of the season.

Can he get one spot better now on Sunday?

“I’m going to get him at some point. I’m very determined,” said McLaughlin. “Helluva race. I think the three of us could have easily swept the top three there. Pato did an awesome job. Their cars are just really good through traffic.”